Blog Topic

Hi,

This blog is about my ongoing experiments with heterogenous networking. 

Sure, you can build a small organization or home server with a domain controller, fileshares, groupware, database, and centralized backup on a Linux host... no problem... but how? 

All the documentation I could find is extremely poor, incorrect, covers only one aspect, or leaves out reasons behind major decisions. I intend to change that.

Likewise, all the related packages (for ubuntu at least) have default configurations that assume UNIX-like authentication and user profiles - despite having the capability to authenticate against an Active Directory server (like Samba 4). This in itself makes sense... they are after all on a Linux system, but I have found no integrated way to configure all the required services without manually editing each one, often putting in the same settings multiple times - in multiple config file languages. I intend to change that.

Furthermore there is little documentation offering an easy way to set up centralized backup for the server and the client devices it is supporting. I intend to change that too.

So, those are lofty goals and kind of nebulous... What deliverables do I expect to produce?

1. A script to automate setup of a Samba4 Domain Controller using Ubuntu standard packages, sensible defaults, and only a few user supplied values
2. A script to automate setup of Dovecot and Postfix to authenticate against and get virtual user configs from the Samba4 Domain controller of point 1
3. A script to automate setup of DaviCal to work with the DC of point 1
4. Documentation of how to use 1,2, and 3
5. Scripts to backup 1, 2, and 3, and re-build them onto a fresh install Ubuntu server.
6. Documentation of how to do 5, and how to do partial restores with the backup.
7. Documentation of how to set up Windows Backup to back up to 1
8. Scripts to configure NetATalk so that Macs can use time machine onto the same server, authenticating against 1
9. Documentation of how to use 8
10. PPA or mainline deb packages of 1-9